


Queer

by SeashellDestihell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Dean-Centric, Homophobic Language, John Winchester's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 20:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12284241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeashellDestihell/pseuds/SeashellDestihell
Summary: A collection of times Dean encounters the word queer.





	Queer

Dean’s not a queer. He doesn’t think.

He first hears the word at seven years old sitting in Bobby’s kitchen, cleaning silver with a dirty rag while Sammy plays with Hot Wheels on equally dirty hardwood. Dad and Bobby are in the front room oiling the guns and watching daytime television. The TV is turned too low to be anything more than a quiet murmur of background noise, but his father and Bobby are several bottles deep and speaking louder than they probably realize. Dean won’t know for years what it means, but at seven he’s convinced from the sound of it that it’s not something he wants to be.

“Fuckin’ queers,” dad slurs angrily at the television. Bobby snorts and hums in agreement.

“If there’s anything worse than a demon,” Bobby trails off leaving Dean with his head cocked to the side, questioning what the end of that sentence might be.

“Exactly,” John says back and Dean huffs in frustration. No doubt one more thing John would tell him he’s too young to understand.

~

The first time the word gets used against him, Dean is nine years old, almost ten. He’s short for his age, and chubby. Two things stacked against him when the kids from his new class see him holding Sammy’s hand on the way to school. The don’t like the way he holds Sam’s coat up for him to put his arms through or ties his shoelaces for him after school. They make fun of Dean when they hear he makes Sam’s lunch. After Dean drops Sam off at the preschool side of the building, they bump into Dean and shove him until he falls to the ground.

“Queer,” one sneers at him while another spits at his feet.

“Faggot.”

~

Dean works up the nerve to ask John about it a week later when they’re driving out of town.

“Jesus, Dean,” Dad curses and swerves the car onto the shoulder for a second before righting it. “Where’d you hear those words?” _From you_ , Dean doesn’t say. _Boys spit them at me_ , he doesn’t say.

“At school,” is what he does say. He watches Dad watch him in the rearview mirror. He stares for too long, like he can tell Dean didn’t just hear them in passing at school. Like he knows the boys were calling Dean that.

“It’s something not good, buddy,” Dad finally says. “Monsters aren’t the only evil in the world.” Dean glances quickly at Sammy, but he’s still stretched out across the backseat, asleep. “Humans can be just as bad.” Dean wants to believe Dad is talking about the boys at school who make fun of him and push him to the ground, but there’s a sick curl in his stomach that tells him they’re not the ones John is talking about. “Don’t worry so much, though. Just avoid those kids.”

~

Dad drops them off at Pastor Jim’s for a month after that. He says two weeks, but two weeks come and go and they’re still running up and down the church aisles while Pastor Jim lights candles for the next service. Dean helps him sometimes. He likes Pastor Jim a lot, much better than Bobby Singer with his house full of guns and other things Dean can’t touch. Pastor Jim tells him not to touch the candles because they’re hot (duh) and not to take any money he sees lying around because it’s meant for the church, but otherwise lets Dean and Sam run wild. He tells them to be careful when they climb on the pews, but he doesn’t tell them to stop.

When Dean was younger, he would trail after Pastor Jim like a duckling while he explained every item on the alter after Dean pointed to it. Maybe that’s why Dean asks him about the words. Dad never really explains anything except monsters. Dean doesn’t know why he asked in the first place except that it felt like he’d accidentally swallowed the words and they were burning a hole in his throat until he was able to release them.

Pastor Jim’s jaw drops open like a cartoon when he asks.

“Those aren’t nice words; you shouldn’t repeat them,” he says, still looking a bit dazed and Dean feels properly chastised.

“The boys at school called me that,” Dean admits. Pastor Jim hesitates before he sits down on the pew next to Dean. There’s an evening mass starting in an hour, but this is more important right now. He breathes in deep and releases it. Dean does his best to mimic it.

“Some people,” Pastor Jim starts and pauses, collecting his words. “Some people are not very nice.”

“Likes queers?” Dean asks forgetting for a moment that Pastor Jim told him not to say those words anymore.

“No,” Pastor Jim says patiently, “like the people that call other people those names. Like the boys at your school.”

“Why?” Dean asks, emboldened, “What does it mean?” Pastor Jim frowns.

“It’s complicated,” he hedges. “It’s not… it doesn’t mean anything bad, but it’s a bad way to talk about it.” Dean waits for Pastor Jim to continue. He listens to the sounds of Sammy running his Hot Wheels along the cold, cement floor and over the rug running up the center aisle. “Some people are different… and some other people think that that’s a bad thing. That word, it means different, but it’s a not so nice way of saying that.”

“Am I…?” Dean trails off, remembering not to repeat it this time. Pastor Jim looks a little startled by the question, like he wasn’t expecting it.

“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “You might not know either for… a very long time. But—but it—it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you were. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Dean looks away then. His face feels hot and embarrassed, but he doesn’t know why. Pastor Jim seems to sense that Dean doesn’t want to talk anymore, because he pats him once on the knee and moves to stand. “Can you help me put the hymnals out before people start coming in?” he asks and Dean hops readily to his feet, eager for a distraction from the clammy, unsteady way he’s feeling. Pastor Jim says it’s not bad, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dad does. That Bobby does. That the boys at his school in Arizona did.

~

Dean’s not queer, he doesn’t think. But sometimes he’s wondered what his life would be like if he were born a girl. If it’d be different.

Jealously burned hot in his belly when he used to watch Dad interact with Jo Harvelle. He brought her dolls and hairclips with little flowers on them, indulged her when she twirled around in her new dress while he waited for her dad to be ready to go. Dad’s never looked at Dean or Sammy that way and Dean can’t help feeling that he knows exactly why. It’s the reason he let Jo put one of her dresses on him after Dad had been gone a few days. Why he let her distract Mrs. Harvelle long enough for Dean to sneak into her bathroom and steal a tube of lipstick, his hands shaking and sweaty when he took in all the different, pretty smelling things on her vanity. He felt another twinge of longing before he grabbed the first thing shaped like Jo told him and bolted.

Mrs. Harvelle laid into them both equally when she found them, but it was mostly about the ruined lipstick. It was a pretty pink color, too subtle for Jo until she’d smashed it around both of their lips with enough force to leave behind thick, waxy trails. Mrs. Harvelle told them it was ruined and Dean sobbed. He never wanted to ruin it, just to wear it. To be one step closer to the kind of person his dad was gentle with.

It’s the same reason he lets Rhonda Hurley put her pink panties on him over a decade later. For one crazy minute, he wonders if Rhonda might look at him the same way he looks at her when she wears them: like she’s beautiful. He feels something click comfortably into place when he looks at himself in her bathroom mirror, but when he steps into her bedroom, her eyes have nothing but lust in them and he feels shame crowding in. It’s not the look he was going for, but he’ nineteen and it’s a look he’s used to dealing with by now. He puts on a smirk he doesn’t quite feel and goes with it.

Rhonda tears the panties trying to get them off Dean and he feels his stomach drop watching the dainty, pink fabric fluttering to the ground.

~

He plays around with his look at much as he dares when he’s alone. When Sam and John are gone to opposite ends of the country Dean grows his hair long and shoplifts himself the underwear he’d rather be wearing. But it doesn’t settle him. The way his hair falls only highlights his square jawline. The underwear chafe him during hunts. He feels unstable. Unmoored.

He beds women and envies their curves. He fucks guys and envies their confidence. He doesn’t know who he is. The word queer pops into his head frequently, but he pushes it out. He smokes and drinks until he can’t think of anything at all.

~

“Moondoor is a just about the best place to be queer,” Charlie confides in Dean after she winks at yet another woman in costume. Dean trips over his own feet, nearly knocking into Charlie. “What?” she asks with a frown marring her delicate features.

“Isn’t, uh,” Dean doesn’t know how to ask, but he wants to. He needs to know. He’s felt hounded by the word since grade school. Hasn’t said it aloud since that night at Pastor Jim’s. “Isn’t that, uh, you know, like a slur?” Charlie stops walking to consider him.

“I mean… sometimes,” she says carefully. They should be focusing on the case, but Dean feels like he’s practically vibrating out of his skin right now. He has to know what Charlie’s going to say next. “But it was also reclaimed by activists decades ago, you know?” Dean shakes his head at the rhetorical question. He doesn’t know. “Yeah. People use it to self identify now and it’s cool. It’s ours now.” Dean flushes at the way she says “ours,” including him. He’s never said it in so many words, but he knows she knows and it feels so much more comfortable than he thought it could.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to use it, though,” she says after a while, mistaking Dean’s relieved silence for something else. “Not everyone likes to.”

“I didn’t know,” is all he says and she nods along like that makes sense.

“Think about it. You don’t have to decide immediately. Or, like, ever, really.” The phrasing mimics something in the back of his mind. ‘ _You might not know… for a very long time_ ,’ that’s what Pastor Jim had said to him. He told him it was ok either way. Charlie echoes that now. There’s not just one right answer and though that scares him, it’s freeing, too. No expectations. No destiny. Isn’t that what he’d been trying to escape for years now? Here is it landing in his lap, handed to him by a friend. Dean breathes in deeply and smells campfires and leaves and sweat. He breathes out and he feels a certain calmness settling over him. Dean doesn't have to be queer, but he could be and it would be ok.

“Ok.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I want to explore more the idea that Dean isn't entirely cis gender. I don't know if that comes across, but I wanted to try.


End file.
